Part of the history of the England football team. The first England manager inset signature in a mount. A rare signature.
Walter Winterbottom, who died aged 88, was the first full-time manager of the England football team, and kept the job for 16 years, from 1946 to 1962. During this time England consistently qualified for the World Cup, although in the 1950 tournament in Brazil they lost 1-0 to the United States – a great disapointment in the history of English football.
Winterbottom was concurrently director of coaching at the Football Association, When his boss, the FA secretary Sir Stanley Rous, retired in 1962, everyone expected Winterbottom to become the new secretary.
It was said that Winterbottom could never communicate with England players because he had not played professional football himself. He had played with some success.
Winterbottom was a schoolmaster. He taught for three years in Oldham, playing centre-half meanwhile for Royston Amateurs in the Lancashire and Cheshire League, and for Mossley. It was here that he was spotted by Manchester United's chief scout, Louis Rocca; and the money he earned from turning professional with United allowed him to study at Carnegie physical training college, where eventually he joined the staff.
His debut for United was in 1934, in a League match versus Leeds, which he remembered because he had eaten something that upset him and felt violently ill.
Spinal trouble put him prematurely out of the game, and when the second world war broke out in 1939 he joined the RAF, becoming chief instructor of physical training at RAF Cosford, then head of physical training at the Air Ministry. He later continued his playing career, turning out as a guest for Chelsea at half back and full back, and was even named twice as an England reserve.
He was appointed England manager and senior FA coach in 1946. He was concurrently in charge of the senior, amateur and youth international teams - the latter a new departure - till pressure of work obliged him to give up the last two responsibilities.
Having never been a club manager, Winterbottom found himself subject to much criticism. And so he gathered around him a band of like-minded people men such as Ron Greenwood and Bill Nicholson, who would become influential managers in the years to come.
He inherited a talented England team, though it must be emphasised that he never, officially, had responsibility for picking it. This was given to a panel of selectors, and yet he was the target of the press when things went wrong. However, by the time of the 1958 World Cup finals, England's third in a row, he had the selectors in his pocket.
In no other footballing country in the world could a manager with Winterbottom's results have survived so long. You could hardly blame him for the defeat in Brazil when, as he said, "We did have our chances, dozens of them,"
In 1953, when England were thrashed 6-3 by Hungary at Wembley. When they went to Budapest the following May, they had learned so little that they were humiliated 7-1. Still, Winterbottom kept his job, and took the team on to the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland, where they reached the quarter-finals.
England's 1958 prospects were damaged by the Munich air crash, which killed three key players - Roger Byrne, Tommy Taylor and Duncan Edwards. Leaving the Bolton centre-forward Nat Lofthouse out of a World Cup party was an mistake. Another was not to give the young Bobby Charlton a single World Cup game. A third was to throw two new boys, Peter Broadbent and Peter Brabrook, in at the deep end for the play-off against the Soviet Union. But under Winterbottom, England qualified again in 1962 and reached the quarter-finals, loosing out to Brazil. Winterbottom was posthumously inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame in 2005 in recognition of his contribution as a manager to the English game on a national level.
His record reads played 139 won 78 drawn 33 lost 28 his win % was 56.12.
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